North Port Events to retain Auckland Art Fair in event sale

Friday, October 11, 2019

North Port Events have today announced the sale of nine of their shows to another family-run events company, XPO Exhibitions. The annual Auckland Art Fair will remain with North Port Events and owners Dona and Gavin White are committed to continuing to run the event, together with Fair co-directors Hayley White and Stephanie Post.

North Port Events began in 1993 with The Parent & Child Show (now the Baby Show) with the couple extending their portfolio to include The Food Show (Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland), Fine Food New Zealand, Facilities Integrate, Waikato Home and Garden Show and Autumn HomeXPO. The Auckland Art Fair was acquired by Gavin and Dona White in 2015 and has seen increased success in profile and repute under their stewardship with the event attracting in the region of 10,000 visitors over five days, and sales of art by the 40+ galleries growing from around NZ$ 5 million in 2016 to over NZ$ 9 million in the 2019 edition last May. Under North Port Events the Fair also moved from being a biennial event to an annual edition beginning in 2018.

With the Auckland Art Fair becoming the sole focus of North Port Events, Dona and Gavin together with the co-directors Hayley and Stephanie are thrilled to be focusing their full attention on building on the success of the last three editions.

‘We’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved since our first edition in 2016, in terms of the galleries who participate, the quality of art that they show, the value of art sold, our partnerships with sponsors and overall visitor numbers. I’m really excited to now commit to the Fair full time and alongside Stephanie, we’ll continue to build on our goal of making the Auckland Art Fair an annual opportunity to experience some of the best new art from the wider Pacific region.” Hayley White, co-director, Auckland Art Fair.

Applications to participate in the 2020 Auckland Art Fair have been open to galleries since September, and Stephanie and Hayley are impressed with both the quality and number of applications already received from galleries from New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific Rim.

The 2020 Auckland Art Fair will take place at The Cloud on Auckland’s waterfront from Wednesday 29 April – Sunday 3 May. A full list of participating galleries will be announced in the New Year, and tickets to the Fair will go on sale on 4 March 2020.

ANZ Private and ATEED remain lead partners of the event and look forward to supporting the Fair in the future.

For further information about the 2020 edition of Auckland Art Fair please visit the Fair website https://artfair.co.nz/, and for updates follow @aucklandartfair on Instagram.